are not more than about one-fourth as great as in the north, these pages will surely be of interest and will repay them for the time consumed in their perusal. The peninsula of Florida extends abruptly from the main land of the continent, in a direction a little east of south. It is nearly 400 miles in length, and has an average width of 130 miles. Its formation is peculiar. Every other peninsula in the world owes its existence to a central mountain chain, which affords a stubborn resistance to the waves. Florida has no such elevations, and mainly a loose, low, sandy soil. It has another peculiarity. It is said, that at no other point in the world do the trade winds divide, as at Cape Sable. On the one hand, passing up the east coast to the Atlantic, and on the west into the Gulf of Mexico. This it is that produces that wonderful equability of climate, that puzzles a northern man to understand, why it should be so much cooler in summer than at the north. The base of all southern Florida is limestone, not tertiary, but modern and coralline. This it is that prevents all miasma, and this decomposed limestone with its admixture of vegetable mold, makes the best soil in the United States for the introduction of tropical plants. This it is, also, that causes the difference in fertility of this soil, as compared with the siliceous sand of the more northern part of the State. Biscayne Bay is located on the south-eastern coast of Florida, between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth degrees of north latitude, below the frost line, and is included within the limits of Dade county. The following facts are quoted from the “Florida Settler and Immigrants’ Guide,” prepared by Dennis Eagan, Commissioner of Lands and Immigration: “The climate of Dade county is exceedingly agreeable and conducive to health. The thermometer throughout the year shows a temperature of about seventy-five degrees, the extremes being fifty-one and ninety-two degrees. It is never visited by frost, and the heat in midsummer is much less oppressive than at New York or places further north, being tempered by the influence of the Gulf Stream, which flows within a few miles of the coast. The water is pure and good. Many fine springs are found in different parts of the country; some of them mineral springs of considerable value. The everglades, which are within the limits of Dade county, simply consist of a shallow lake of vast extent--the water is from six inches to six feet in depth, and teems with aquatic and semiaquatic plants, which present to the eyes of the beholder a scene of perpetual verdure. Out of the surface of the lake rise innumerable small islands, which are covered over with a growth of cypress, sweet bay, crabwood, mastic, cocoa palms, cabbage palmetto, and live and water oaks. The waters abound in turtles, fish, etc. Around the margin of the everglades is a prairie, from half a mile to a mile in breadth; * * * this prairie comprises some of the